Last year's winning car gives students a goal in the Shell Eco-marathon

By Jeannie Kever |
April 4, 2013
| Updated: April 4, 2013 8:42pm

Brian Liu, a University of Houston student, starts up a vehicle he and his teammates plan to enter in the Shell Eco-marathon.

Photo By Nick de la Torre/Staff

Brian Liu, a University of Houston student, starts up a vehicle he and his teammates plan to enter in the Shell Eco-marathon.

Photo By Nick de la Torre/Staff

Ivan Serrano, a University of Houston student, drives a vehicle he and his teammates will enter in the Shell Eco-Marathon.

Don't tell his professors, but Adewale Taiwo will be graduating this weekend.

Oh, he's still got a few more classes to attend at the University of Houston. Even a few more finals to take.

"But this," Taiwo said, gesturing to the fiberglass body and the hydrogen fuel cell tucked inside the car he and his teammates have built, "is my cap and gown."

Their ceremony will be the Shell Eco-marathon, three days of futuristic car craziness that has attracted teams from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Guatemala to compete on design and energy efficiency.

The event starts Friday at Discovery Green in downtown Houston.

The Eco-marathon began as a bet between two Shell Oil Co. scientists back in 1939 to see who could design an engine that would stretch a gallon of gasoline the farthest.

It resurfaced in the United States seven years ago. Now held in Houston, the event draws participants from across the Americas. Royal Dutch Shell also sponsors Eco-marathons in Europe and Asia.

The goal is to promote fuel efficiency, as well as awareness of job opportunities in the industry.

"You might think it's just gasoline, it's kind of boring," David Dudek, Shell's research manager for fuels technology for the Americas, told a group of University of Houston students this week as they toured the Shell Technology Center. "It's not."

Just last week, he said, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed reducing the amount of sulfur emissions allowed from gasoline.

"That's going to have a dramatic impact on a company like Shell and on refiners," Dudek said.

He and his colleagues offered insight into the research that goes into developing products. But at the Eco-marathon, for cars that use gasoline at all, the goal is to use as little as possible.

Miserly rate

Last year's winning car, built by a team of high school students from Indiana, sipped at a miserly rate of 2,188 miles per gallon.